A round-trip train ticket from Penn Station to MetLife Stadium costs $12.90 on an NFL game day. For the World Cup, NJ Transit will charge $150. Same route. Same tracks. Eleven times the price.
That's the reality hitting fans two months before the tournament kicks off — and it's already triggered a full political fight between New Jersey's governor and FIFA.
A $48 million bill and a $0 contribution
Gov. Mikie Sherrill went after FIFA this week, not mincing words. "We inherited an agreement where FIFA is providing $0 for transportation to the World Cup," she said in a video posted on social media. "And while NJ TRANSIT is stuck with a $48 million bill to safely get fans to and from games, FIFA is making $11 billion."
She's calling on FIFA to cover the cost of rides to each of the eight games at MetLife — including the final on July 19.
FIFA's counter: the original 2018 host-city agreements required free fan transportation, but in 2023 they quietly walked that back to only requiring transport be available "at cost." They also pointed out they've never had to pay for fan transport at other major stadium events. Technically defensible. Politically tone-deaf.
And then there's the parking issue. Sherrill added Friday that FIFA has eliminated parking at MetLife entirely for World Cup matches — dumping four times the usual matchday rider volume onto NJ Transit with no financial support to handle it.
New Jersey isn't alone in this
Boston's host committee announced $95 bus tickets from the city to Gillette Stadium in Foxborough — four times the normal fare. The pattern is consistent: cities absorbing the logistics burden of a FIFA-run event and passing the cost directly to fans.
Thomas Concannon of the UK-based Football Supporters' Association summed it up cleanly: "I think at this stage, fans couldn't feel less welcome. We weren't expecting transport to be free. But we weren't expecting to be gouged, either."
FIFA president Gianni Infantino has described this World Cup as "104 Super Bowls." The Super Bowl comparison is starting to land differently than he intended — because the Super Bowl is also notorious for pricing out ordinary fans entirely.
Dynamic ticket pricing has already sent seats soaring. A resale ticket to the MetLife final was listed above $9,000 on Friday. Add the train, and you're looking at at least $9,150 per person just to walk through the turnstiles. That's before a beer or a scarf.
